These Days
by The Forbidden Secrets
Summary: Sometimes even the best of intentions go horribly awry, but even as the world burns under the mistakes of many, some make peace with the inferno and live without regrets. Giftfic. Oneshot. Perceptor/Starscream


Title: These Days

Pairing: Perceptor/Starscream

Rating: Pg-13 (T)

Disclaimer: I don't own. I wasn't even born yet.

AN: This is a belated gift for my oh so lovely twin. Hope you love it babe.

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Perceptor gazed around himself with a jaded smile. These days, the world was always burning.

Everything that had once been green was now charred and ashen, sending fragments of lost life scattering into the winds that coated the deserts and sank into the boiling seas. Nothing would last much longer. For a long time the screams of man had carried through the skies until one by one they gave way to the fire that consumed them all.

For a time Ratchet has informed them of the array of causes of death from panic induced physical violence to black lung that had swarmed the planet. Long after the Medic's paint had darkened and streaked with soot he had continued to determinedly repeat the natural causes of death out loud, even when no one had been listening. It was only after Spike had been lost to the fire that Ratchet was silenced.

It wasn't long after that the silence spread amongst them all like a plague. One by one, like humans in death, the remaining Autobots and Decepticons fell quiet, their past confrontations paling against the inferno that now defined their lives. Other, over time, however, had found a life in the despair. When ranks and order had dissolved among the stench of burning flesh the Lamborghini's had taken off like Unicron himself was on their heels. He might as well have been. Sometimes it was possible to catch sight of them streaking across the wastelands, the ground breaking under their jubilation as they embraced the chaos.

Similarly Mirage had also left early, before the dust had even settled over the wreckage. He had been assumed dead but the sight of Drag Strip racing through the carnage '_alone'_ with the steady roar of two engines convinced him otherwise. Why the ex-noble hadn't wanted to be seen was his own business and not something the scientist cared much for these days. After all, so many more were just truly… gone.

As for himself after he had let go of his initial grief he had found the new world fascinating, like standing witness to the rebirth of Earth. Nothing of the planet still resembled what it once had been, it was a place born into ashes, begging to be understood, to be controlled. Eventually. He, unlike so many of the others, had no fear that he was going to offline and rust among the ghosts of a race they destroyed trying to protect. He was sure that they would.

Not for lack of trying to survive however. All the chaotic energy that was literally spewing off the planet made collecting Energon effortless and from his scans of the planet over the past decade he was pleased to notice the raw materials and minerals replenishing as time wore on. If they were lucky perhaps a few of them would be functional by the time they could harvest metal from the planet.

Making his way down to where the Topac Gorge once framed the Colorado River Perceptor retested against the remains of what once was a beautiful testament to nature. A few feet away a scavenger feline drank slowly from the still water that had been trapped there when the water flow had receded and walls were put up on either side of Havasu Lake. He had developed a fondness for the creatures and a part of him hoped they would survive as a species to see the new Eden. They were an un-shy species that weren't above the lowest of survival techniques. Though solitary in nature they hunted in packs to take down larger prey when corpses to feast from were scarce. They were vicious and kept companions only so far as it served them and above all they reminded him of the mech he was waiting for.

Dimming the power to his optics he sent out idle scans of his surroundings, picking up the minerals and wastes that were building in the still water and were encased in the crumbling rock. It wasn't too long before the pulsing thrum of a seeker's engines broke through the sky, the sound rolling like thunder behind him. He could feel Starscream land gracefully a scant few yards away, his cooling vents fighting both against the heat of the planet and the taxation of being the fastest moving thing on Earth. The cut of the flier's engine left the small valley suffocating with the return of the peace, or as peaceful as it ever got, and at the edge of his retracted sensors he could sense the scavenger feline casting Starscream is disgruntled look before running off.

"You made it." He commented unnecessarily, fully expecting the derisive snort he got for a response. He had known very early that the seeker thought that pointing out the obvious was a sign of idiocy but it didn't stop him from doing it all the same. Conversations just weren't something anyone back 'home' (when he managed to wander back to the old base) still felt like doing. Starscream, on the other hand, still enjoyed to talk and no matter the reason why or the topic it was a strange comfort. "I would have thought that you'd have left."

"None of us can." Starscream responded easily, a blatant lie he told every time they met since everything fell apart. There was nothing holding the sx-SIC on the cracking planet but Perceptor never asked. In his spark there was an answer he was longing to hear, one that he never would. And that was okay, so long as he never actually asked.

"I suppose not." Perceptor agreed, like always, without arguing. Finally on-lining his optics to full power he gave the seeker a once over. His paint was different again; black covering his hands while the rest of his frame loosely imitated his old patterns while yellow graced his wings in loud arcs. It was a haphazard scheme that screamed aggression and the fresh gleam to the paint was a clear sign that Starscream had gotten into another fight. Why the seeker went through the trouble to find, collect, and store fresh paint was beyond him and could only be attributed to pure narcissism. After all even Sunstreaker had let go of his appearance once it was clear there would never be anyone on the planet that would ever care again.

Still Starscream persisted. And still Perceptor said nothing about it.

However while the paint didn't concern him the cause did. As the solar days ticked by, one tumbling into another until they blurred together, it became increasingly difficult to fix each other when damage was inflicted. Aware of this both sides ceased their fighting, all but seeker he had once found leaking oil into the sand and he had saved out of a compassion he had thought he'd forgotten.

"Who was it this time?" He quarried, stepping forward without much care to his own safety to place a worn hand delicately against Starscream's arm. This close he could see the irregularities in Starscream's plating that he tried to cover up with gallons of paint. The lack of a reply from the seeker didn't deter him as he traced his fingers across his front, delicately avoiding the cockpit and the hairline crack that never got fixed from ages ago, and down his sides looking for any real damage that had just been covered up. He wasn't a medic by any stretch but he was a scientist and he knew more than his share of the workings of the body. He had managed to put the scrap heap formerly known as Starscream back together the first time after all.

Even with his belated knowledge that Starscream was 'also' a graduate student from the Iacon Science Academy (something he felt Skyfire should have maybe mentioned years ago) he didn't trust the seeker to tend to himself properly. Deciding that there was nothing life or death wrong with his companion Perceptor turned his gaze up into Starscream's face, blue optics piercing and demanding an answer. "The twins?" He offered a guess to get the older mech to speak.

Snorting Starscream let his usual cockiness overtake the calculated blankness of his face now that Perceptor had given the silent clean bill of health. "Tracks. He had an issue with me because he can't break the atmosphere. Second rate will always be second rate, '_always'_."

"Mhm." Perceptor half heartedly agreed, wishing he could roll his eyes like the humans used to. Though since the culprit was Tracks this time he could somewhat believe that Starscream actually hadn't started the fight. The other mech had become finicky about _his_ airspace and had even taken out all the missile bases after the humans had died for no reason other than to make sure nothing fought in the skies. If the action wasn't so completely neurotic it might have been cute. "Well I've seen you, you're not about to drop out of the skies due to self neglect, I'm appeased. Now off to whatever it is you do."

When Starscream grabbed his arms instead of backing off Perceptor groaned in frustration. He had long past the time where he thought the seeker would harm him but the larger mech was too prone to mood swings to be completely alright in the processor, and, as it was, he could only be so close to the flier for so long before he started to feel the urge to do something stupid. "Something the matter? The suns already set."

"Not really, just don't feel like going anywhere yet."

"O-oh well," his usual calm presence around Starscream faltering, Perceptor frowned, looking pointedly away from the Decepticon. "I have things I need to be doing, studies and all to make sure we're not going to combust without… well… knowing. So if you would just let me go I'll see you the next time we meet, or you manage to get your aft slagged."

Tightening his hold, a movement more to show that he wasn't going to listen to Perceptor rather than to actually accomplish anything, Starscream's smug grin widened. "Worried?"

"Of course I am glitch-head." The science mech hissed in displeasure, yanking back fruitlessly against the seeker's hold. "I don't waste my time making sure you're still functioning because I want you offlined."

"Someone should have explained that to Megatron when he was still… in one piece." Starscream hummed humorlessly, a dark glint in his optics telling he probably had more to do with his master's final demise then he was letting on. Worrisome because the ex-SIC was a braggart through and through, but that was a conversation and a question for another life he would never live.

"I'm sure he understood the basic principles of-"

Starscream clearly didn't care to hear one way or another what Megatron should have known about the basics of caring as he silenced Perceptor with a rough press of his lips against the science mech's, his grip tightening until it was painful.

Breaking apart any thoughts of Megatron or anything before that moment really escaped him. Unsure what to make of the seemingly erratic gesture Perceptor spit out the first thing that came to mind. "You _could_ leave." He whispered quietly into the twilight, his lips alive with long unused sensor arrays and his glossia heavy with the truth he had avoided speaking until now.

In the strange glow of the new night, orange clouds lying like rust above the navy sky, Starscream's optics flared to life, the severe red glow echoing every day that they continued to survive. "I know." Simple words that cut through the air, the seeker's anything but lyrical voice, strained from years of lack of maintenance, begging him to ask the one question he never wanted to. Starscream asked it for him. "Why?"

"W-what?" Perceptor floundered, hands absently tightening against the seeker's sides. "What do you mean '_why_'? You could _leave_ this planet, Primus knows all the other fliers already have. Why are you _here?_" The scratching laughter that fell from Starscream's vocalizer was disconcerting in its emotion. Unlike the hollow or forced laughs he had spent what seemed like eons listening to, the flier was actually… happy.

"Here or there, it doesn't matter anymore. You have to be deluded to think Cyberton simply refuses to respond to our pleas. The planet is dead, and so is everyone that was left there." Glancing up, his hands tightening on Perceptor's arms, Starscream grinned darkly up into the Sky that refused to show them The Black. "If we're all going to die, let's do it where it matters, on a planet still worth dying on."

To die on a planet worth dying on… huh. Following Starscream's gaze upward a coy smile curved across his face plates. "To go down with no regrets?"

"No regrets. No running and no _'wishing for a better life'_."

Perceptor considered the statement, the idea sounding better and better the more it crossed over his processors. "Why did you lie about not being able to leave?" It was the last thing he had to know, to know for certain before he agreed to the end of his life with no thoughts to the future at all or what it could hold.

"Because," looking down at Perceptor, his optics gleaming in amusement, Starscream leaned in closer to the smaller mech. "You were still running."

Laughing openly, unused to the sound of his own joy, Perceptor tilted his head up to bring his lips once again roughly against Starscream's, his hands tightening desperately around the seeker's waist.

These days, the world was always burning, but he could live with that.

-FIN-


End file.
